


second glances

by targe (headlong)



Category: Fate/Grand Order, Fate/stay night & Related Fandoms
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, M/M, Pre-Slash
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-15
Updated: 2018-08-15
Packaged: 2019-06-27 19:27:49
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,249
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15691878
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/headlong/pseuds/targe
Summary: Bedivere and Tristan get pancakes at two o'clock on a Saturday morning. Inevitably, the conversation turns to Artoria.





	second glances

Tristan has the kind of strange, sonorous voice which carries no matter where he is, or how loudly he’s speaking; Bedivere can hear him before he opens the front door, clean through the wood. Still, it’s unusual for him to be back this early, if not entirely unexpected. It’s almost two in the morning, and he normally doesn’t get home until at least three, if at all. It isn’t too difficult to guess what must have happened.

All the lights are on in the main room, when he lets himself in, and two of his three housemates are at the dining table. They glance up as the door clicks shut, as if they had been expecting him – and, in all honesty, they probably were. There’s Gawain, visibly exhausted and strangely out of place in a royal blue dressing gown, and Tristan, in his Friday-night best, slumped opposite. He probably isn’t drunk, judging by his posture, but it’s always a little difficult to tell.

“Thank goodness,” says Gawain, cutting straight to the point. Something must be seriously wrong if he’s up this late; he’s the most aggressively diurnal person Bedivere’s ever met, asleep at ten every night and up at six every morning like clockwork. “I was hoping you’d return soon.”

“The manager wanted to talk to me after my shift. Is there a problem?”

“Yes,” Tristan groans, at the same time as Gawain says, “Not particularly.”

That tells him all he needs to know. He’s about to ask for details, but Gawain speaks first, in the tone that means he’s secretly at his wit’s end.

“Bedivere, would you be able to take over from me? I need to be up early tomorrow.”

“Where’s Lancelot?”

Gawain frowns. “Out,” he says delicately, and it’s testament to how long they’ve known each other that he leaves it at that. According to Artoria, the two of them used to argue about how Gawain thought Lancelot’s grades would drop if he kept playing around with girls, and how Lancelot thought Gawain should mind his own business and get a girlfriend himself. By the time Bedivere had met them, though, they seemed to have agreed not to talk about it. Which didn’t solve the issues of Lancelot’s promiscuity or Gawain’s rigidness, but at least the system worked.

“I’ll handle him,” Bedivere says, deciding to take pity. His sleep schedule’s already a mess, and spending an hour or two with Tristan can’t possibly make it worse. “You can go back to bed.”

“Thank you,” says Gawain, gratitude clear on his face. “Goodnight, then.”

A strange silence falls as he excuses himself and leaves. Tristan doesn’t look up until Gawain’s door has shut behind him, suddenly alert, amber eyes sharp. Bedivere revises his assessment: possibly tipsy, definitely not drunk.

“Finally,” Tristan says. “I was starting to think he’d never leave.”

“Were you trying to get rid of him?”

“Not strictly. But he wasn’t being particularly sympathetic to my plight.”

Bedivere can’t say he’s surprised; Gawain is one of his closest friends, clever and honest and loyal, but he’s not always easy to talk to. It doesn’t help that Tristan’s problems are nearly all about women, and Gawain’s take on romance is… well, there’s a reason he’s never had a girlfriend. And while Bedivere hasn’t either, he’s at least never made a fool of himself trying. Resolved to the circumstances, and still in his work uniform, he takes a seat. “What happened?”

“Isolde invited me to a party.”

“Please don’t tell me you went.”

“I thought it was a good sign,” Tristan says sourly. “How should I have known it wasn’t?”

That explains why Gawain tapped out. The saga, as Bedivere understands it, is that Tristan and Isolde have been on and off again for most of the last four years; the thing is, ever since they started university, they’ve been far more off than on. He isn’t sure how Isolde’s been taking it, but Tristan is a wreck, and a Tristan who’s a wreck is a Tristan who drags his friends down with him. And Bedivere likes Tristan – likes him a lot, even – but it’s exhausting to watch him keep making the same mistakes.

“We’ve discussed this,” he says at last.

“I really thought this time would be different.”

“Do you want to talk about it?”

“Not here.”

“Pancakes, then?”

“I’m too sad for pancakes.”

“Well,” Bedivere says, “I’d like something to eat, and nowhere else will be open.”

Tristan heaves a sigh. “I suppose you’re right.”

“Shall we?”

“We shall.”

They adjourn to grab jackets, and then pile into Bedivere’s ancient car. It’s nearly December, so it’s freezing, and the heating doesn’t come on even after he’s turned the key in the ignition. Tristan shifts to lean his head against the passenger window anyway, heedless of the cold. Bedivere starts the engine, flicks on his headlights, begins the familiar drive.

There’s nobody else on the roads at this hour, and it gives him time to work out what he wants to say. He knows Tristan’s melancholies well by now, can tell his affected sorrows apart from his genuine miseries, and this one seems to be the former. His Isolde episodes actually tend to be mild, sad for the sake of sadness rather than any real wound; most times he just needs to eat something, sober up a little, and be reminded of any of the thousand incidents in which she’d been nasty to him.

The key to figuring out his moods is that when Tristan is really, truly upset about something, he won’t talk about it. Bedivere glances at him in the rear-view mirror, looks away too fast when Tristan’s eyes meet his.

“How was work?”

“It was fine. Actually, I spoke to my boss, and he wants to trial me in a manager role.”

“So you aren’t returning to university?”

The question gives him pause. Bedivere had made it two weeks into his first semester before deciding to defer, and reconsider later on. He’d liked his classes well enough, liked being able to spend time with Tristan and Gawain and Lancelot on campus, liked the feeling of doing something with his life. But it just wasn’t the same without Artoria, who’d gotten a scholarship to study political science at some American college. She’d been the reason he’d made it through high school, and university was a bigger, lonelier place for her absence. He’d gotten a job in the service industry instead, working at a restaurant in the city centre, figuring he should at least make money. He doesn’t hate it, most days.

“I don’t know,” he admits. “Would it be a problem if I didn’t?”

“I’m not the one you’d need to convince. That’s Gawain.”

“If I wanted Gawain’s opinion, I’d have asked him.”

“Well. In that case, I think it’s important to pursue what you love.”

It’s exactly what he’d expected to hear from Tristan, who lives off his rich parents’ money and has been chasing the same girl for years and spends more time screwing around in GarageBand than doing schoolwork. But Bedivere had never loved anything until he met Artoria, and that had only gotten him so far.

“I’m not sure I have that kind of passion.”

“Nonsense, Bedivere. You simply haven’t discovered it.”

They arrive before he can work out how to answer; he tries not to telegraph the fact that’s a distinct relief. Their late-night haunt is a diner crammed into a shopping strip, with bad pancakes and worse coffee, but they’ve been coming here for years, and it never closes. Tristan waits patiently while he parallel parks, even though he whiffs it and has to try again. Maybe that’s because it’s late, or maybe he’s just off tonight. Or maybe it’s the way he can feel Tristan’s eyes on him, even when there’s no reason he should be looking.

The usual waitress greets them when they step inside, leads them to their usual place. They tend to swap between tables, depending who’s in their party, and the staff are always accommodating; because Lancelot, when they bring him along, likes to have a line of sight to the door, and Gawain likes to sit where the lighting is best, and Artoria, when she was here, always liked to sit by the windows. And when it’s just Tristan and Bedivere, as it often is, they pick the tiniest booth in the place, all the way in the back corner. Bedivere’s flexible about seating, but Tristan prefers privacy, so that wins out. When they sit, their legs knock together under the table.

“Same as always?” the waitress asks.

Bedivere says, “If you wouldn’t mind.”

He watches as she bustles off, and when he returns his attention to the table, Tristan is looking at him. One of Bedivere’s favourite things about Tristan is that he doesn’t feel compelled to fill the space; he understands the value of a companionable silence, and never breaks off to fidget or check his phone. But this time, his friend looks uncharacteristically tongue-tied.

“What is it?”

“I’m not sure.” Tristan frowns. “Doesn’t it feel like we haven’t been here in a long time?”

He counts back, marking nights by shifts at work, days by encounters with his housemates. The low light in the corner booth dulls Tristan’s hair to auburn, wedges itself into the creases around his eyes. “We were here the weekend before last.”

“Perhaps it’s just been a particularly slow few weeks.”

“Really?”

“Well, better too slow than too fast, I should think.”

The diner’s playlist finishes one song, loops into the next. It’s an acoustic cover of a pop ballad from his youth, which he can’t name but knows the chorus to. Bedivere taps out the opening riff against the wood of the table, and after a couple of beats, Tristan joins him.

“They don’t make pop music like they used to,” his friend says, once the intro has subsided into a verse. It’s a familiar complaint, coming from him. “There’s no artistry to it any more.”

He trusts that opinion, but mostly because Tristan’s the biggest musical gourmand this side of the Atlantic. He’s been classically trained in harp and piano, but also as a singer; he’s the only person Bedivere’s ever met, of any age, who cares about opera. But in practice, his taste is omnivorous. He listens to just about everything he comes across, even if he doesn’t expect to like it, apparently as research for his own work. Sometimes Bedivere will hear him testing out a melody on the keyboard in his room, or quietly drumming a beat on any available surface, or singing under his breath. But, to this day, he’s never actually heard a single finished piece.

“They should hire you to write for them.”

“I don’t want to compose pop.”

“What do you want to compose?”

“I’m still figuring that out. I’ve tried every genre you can think of in the last few months, but I can’t seem to settle on anything.”

“Sort of like… writer’s block?”

“The opposite, but it amounts to the same thing.” Tristan lolls his head back against the seat, stares despondently up at the ceiling. “The problem’s still the process. I have nothing  _ but _ ideas, but none of them stick.”

He doesn’t know what he’s supposed to say here, except maybe: “Do you know why?”

“Besides the obvious upheaval in my life over the last several months?”

“That’s true. I’m sure it’ll sort itself out, though.”

“I hope it doesn’t  _ all _ sort itself out. I think a little upheaval helps creativity.”

“You’re the expert,” Bedivere says, and Tristan makes an amused sound.

“You don’t seem terribly convinced.”

“You’re the creative here.”

The waitress returns, conveniently timed with a lull in conversation. She has a plate of pancakes for Bedivere in one hand, topped with apples and cinnamon, and Tristan’s usual drink in the other. They’ve been coming here so long that Tristan’s worked his way through the entire mocktail menu, thrice, in search of a new regular. But no matter how many drinks he samples, he keeps coming back to the same one: a fruit salad of about fifty different cordials, with the kind of name that could be either a woman’s or a mild innuendo. He claims it’s the best of a bad lot, that it’s hard to mess up combining those particular flavours. Privately, Bedivere suspects he orders it for the cocktail umbrella.

Tristan doesn’t bother Bedivere while he eats, which he’s grateful for. He’s usually a slow eater, at least compared to his friends, and tonight every bite he takes feels heavy in his mouth. The truth is, he isn’t actually very hungry – but he’d needed to get Tristan out of the house, and, well. He valiantly manages about a third of his food, while the diner’s playlist goes from a pop song into a ballad into another ballad, and then sets his cutlery down.

“So,” he says tentatively. “Isolde’s party.”

Tristan deflates. He’s finished his drink, and is spinning his tiny umbrella – pink, tonight – between thumb and forefinger, but the question makes him stop. “Isolde’s party.”

“What happened?”

“She wanted me to meet one of the other guests. A male one.”

“And?”

“She introduced me as her  _ friend_.”

“I… I don’t follow.”

Tristan sighs through his teeth, like he always does when trying to explain some social nuance only he understands. “It’s an awfully callous way to introduce someone you have that much history with.”

“Would you have preferred ex?”

“You know what I’d have preferred.”

“So, does that mean you’re still in love with her?”

“Madly.”

“Ah.” Bedivere adjusts the angle of his fork against the plate, wrestles with the obvious question. He’s held off for this long out of courtesy, never one to press the issue, but it’s late enough at night that it sort of slips out anyway. “Can I ask: what actually is it about Isolde?”

“You don’t usually want to talk to me about love.”

“I didn’t mean it like that. I just… I suppose I’m curious to know why you keep going back.”

“It isn’t particularly complicated. Do you believe in love at first sight?”

He barely has to think about it. Bedivere doesn’t remember the specifics of when he first met Artoria, only that he had; he had been six years old, and most of his childhood had long since faded into itself in hindsight. His family had moved around a lot, never spending more than two or three years in the same place, and she had been there and gone in a heartbeat. But when he had met her again, after transferring into the same high school, well. She had sought him out on his first day, and spoken to him like nothing had changed, and invited him to sit with her friends – her tall blond cousin and a dark boy and a red-haired boy – and it had felt like he had awoken, at last, from a long sleep. To a world where he could matter.

“I suppose I do,” he says.

“Ah,” says Tristan, “I knew you would. Because I loved Isolde from the moment I saw her, and I’ve never managed to extract myself.”

“I don’t mean any disrespect, but I didn’t know you were trying.”

“Well, even if I  _ was _ , I would have been dragged back in regardless. Love doesn’t let you escape.”

“Isn’t that sort of defeatist?”

“It’s realist. Romantic, even.”

He suspects Tristan’s definition of realism differs significantly from most people’s, but his companion speaks before he can raise that. “May I ask you a question in return?”

“I suppose that’s fair.”

“Were you in love with Artoria?” 

Bedivere blinks. “Sorry?”

“It isn’t that difficult. And you can be honest with me, you know.”

For the first time since she left, Bedivere lets himself think about her properly. It’s still hard to put into words what she’d meant to him, beyond being his closest friend, but he’d always felt like someone else around her, someone better. Later, Gawain had made him feel the same way, although not as strongly, and Lancelot too. Sitting here with Tristan, though, he mostly just feels like himself. “Who wasn’t?”

Tristan makes a sound which might mean agreement, or might mean he doesn’t feel like getting into it. “Gawain tried to talk her out of going overseas, you know.”

“ _What?_ ”

“Remember how they were acting strangely around each other all of summer break? I don’t think they’ve spoken to each other since.”

“I don’t imagine either of them told you that.”

“They didn’t, but it was self-evident. What else could those two have fought about?”

“But – but she was so happy when she got the scholarship.”

“I know. And?”

“And they haven’t made up?”

“Not that I know of.”

“But… they’re friends. They’re  _ family_.”

“Yes, and if you’ll forgive the imprudence, neither of them knows the first thing about dealing with people.”

Bedivere stares at the remains of his pancakes. He’s always thought of himself as reasonably observant, and it makes his stomach churn to find out he’s missed an entire saga. It’s true that he has no hard evidence, but while Tristan may be a terrible judge of his own social life, he’s almost never wrong about others. If he claims something like that happened, Bedivere accepts it.

“It isn’t my place to try and fix things,” he says, “is it.”

“They’ll come around on their own. I think Artoria would forgive him, if Gawain would let himself apologise.”

“But Gawain…” He struggles to find the words. “Gawain probably hasn’t even forgiven  _himself_.”

“Probably not.”

“We can’t just leave things like this.”

“I don’t know. I think it would be good for them to work through it themselves.” Tristan frowns slightly. “Can I have the rest of your pancakes?”

Bedivere slides them across the table, unable to stop his lips from twitching. He had  _ known _ they’d end up here, as they do every time: Tristan always insists he’s not hungry, and ends up polishing off his leftovers anyway.

Still, there’s something he should mention while they’re on the topic. So he watches Tristan eat, picking his way around the worst of the cinnamon, and then speaks.

“Artoria asked me what I thought she should do, just after she got news of the scholarship. She seemed troubled. I suppose now I know why.”

“And?”

“And I told her to take it.”

Tristan prods delicately at a piece of apple. He seems vaguely displeased, but then again, he always sort of does. “You gave up on love? Just like that?”

“I wouldn’t say I gave up. I think I just wanted her to be happy more than I wanted her to stay.”

“You make that sound so easy.”

“Can I be honest with you?”

“I should hope you always are.”

“It killed me, Tristan.”

Tristan looks at him for a long, long time. The diner closes in around them, silent but for some sad, slow love song, and Bedivere becomes sharply aware that they’re the only ones here; even the service staff are all in the kitchen, busy with some task or another. To be honest, he’s still not quite used to how it feels to be seen. He’d preferred to fade into the background for most of his life, and even after reuniting with Artoria and shooting to sudden popularity, he’d always been the least noticeable member of their circle. His friends had all possessed a subtle charisma, the kind which turned heads and won hearts, and Artoria most of all. Bedivere had been their less impressive shadow, and the truth was that he had never really minded, much. It didn’t matter if people’s eyes skimmed over him, so long as his friends managed to see the worth he wasn’t sure he had – but the way Tristan is looking at him now, under these dim yellow lights, cuts down to his bones.

Uncharacteristically, Tristan breaks first. “Where do you get it from?”

“Get what?”

“Your selflessness.”

“I’m not sure it’s that noble.”

“I would beg to differ, but you know that.”

“I do.”

“Let me change the subject, then. Be honest: should I give up on Isolde?”

Tristan is, to say the least, notorious for never taking romantic advice; even Lancelot, who he acknowledges as an equal in matters of love, gets brushed off more often than not. But he’s wearing an unfamiliar expression, hurt bleeding into the lines of his eyebrows and the set of his jaw, as if this time he might listen.

“I think so.”

“Hmm.”

“You aren’t going to ask why?”

“I think, on some level, I know.” He regards Bedivere thoughtfully. “If you hadn’t told me you believed in love at first sight too, I wouldn’t have asked.”

“If it helps, I don’t think love at first sight is all there is.”

“Well, there’s no romance in familiarity.”

“And there is in years of breaking up and getting back together?”

“ _Romance_ might be a strong word, but at least it was always passionate. And what is there to live on if I can’t live on passion?”

Bedivere can’t help his sardonic little huff, like the air’s been punched out of him. “You’re asking the wrong person.”

“This, again? I’m still not sure I believe that.”

“I’m not like you, Tristan. You’re always – composing or chasing Isolde or running off some fantasy. But the most I’ve ever wanted is to live quietly, and to try do what good I can, and to have my friends be happy.”

“I don’t think someone wholly passionless could ever understand me.”

“I’m not sure I do.”

“Yes, you do. Last month, when I fought with Isolde, you were the only one who managed to coax me out of my room.”

“The others were both too busy. They could’ve done it too.”

“Bedivere, give yourself a little credit for once.”

“I’m not sure anecdotal evidence will convince me.”

“Then what would?”

“Nothing, most likely.”

“Then we’re at an impasse.”

Bedivere looks at the menu, the jug of maple syrup in the centre of the table, the angle Tristan’s knife and fork make on his plate, anywhere but his friend. “I think we began at one.”

“So, I claim to be all passion, and you claim to be anything but. Aren’t we a pair.”

That drags a smile out of him, although it’s a reluctant one. “We  _ have _ always been complementary.”

“But,” Tristan continues, “I think you might be misunderstanding what I mean by that.”

“I’m not sure what there is to misunderstand. We’ve talked about love at first sight, and doing what you love, and not giving up on love. And what those all have in common is depth of feeling. Right?”

“Well, yes, but –”

“And I don’t think I’m capable of that. Not when it comes to anything beyond… my friends, I suppose.”

“That’s hardly meaningless.”

“I know. But it gives me very little direction in life, outside of that.”

“Then,” Tristan says decisively, “I’ll teach you something of passion.”

Bedivere regards him with all the scepticism he can muster. It’s just like him to make that kind of assertion, with an ironclad confidence, and an assumption that everything will pan out as expected. It’s a trait he shares with their other friends, but it’s rare of Tristan to use that in the service of optimism.

“I’m not sure it can be learned.”

“Have you tried?”

“ _Have I tried? _ ” Bedivere echoes incredulously. “I feel like I’ve spent my whole life trying. I don’t know if it even matters at this point.”

“Don’t be ridiculous. We’ll find something you love.”

“How?”

“We’ll look. And if that doesn’t work, we’ll look and look again.” Tristan stands. “Shall we?”

For a moment, Bedivere can’t seem to speak. Something about the figure Tristan cuts, in this nowhere diner, gives him pause. It isn’t just that he looks different from this angle, but there’s a strange regality in the set of his shoulders and the fall of his hair and the lines of his mouth. Why this should strike him now, of all times, is beyond him, but it makes his breath go cold in his throat.

In hindsight, it was obvious why Bedivere had been drawn to Artoria and her friends. There’s a drive that animates all of them, makes them feel more than human, in a way that he still doesn’t think can be taught. But that  _ something _ hadn’t been immediately apparent, at least not in a way he’d realised. Instead, he’d learned it by coming into contact with them again and again, discovering more about them in fragments, committing each new piece of knowledge to memory. The way Gawain’s awkward manner conceals a depth of feeling for his friends he doesn’t know how to express; the way Lancelot feigns apathy about school, but regularly stays up late drafting and re-drafting assignments. The way Artoria’s face always crinkled when she was trying not to laugh, torn between sincerity and her strict upbringing, in a way that had made him feel warm inside. And the way Tristan’s eyes arrest him, now, at half past two on a Saturday morning, like he really believes Bedivere could be exceptional. First sight may have been what brought them together, but second glances had been what made him stay.

For all his idiosyncracies, for all his dubious romantic decisions, Tristan’s never steered him wrong. And if he believes it, that makes Bedivere want to believe it too.

“We shall.”


End file.
